By
Dora Machado
Here at MB4 we love being part of the writing community at large. So I was delighted when my dear
friend, Eleanor Khuns, author of the fantastic historical mysteries Death of a Dyer, A Simple Death and Craddle to Grave, invited me to
participate in the Sisters in Crime blog hop.
Which authors have inspired you?
I'm
one of those people who think that the human mind is influenced by every
contact and every read, no matter how casual or light. I learn from every word I read. Heck, even when
I don't enjoy a writer, I'm still learning from what him or her. As a young
woman growing up in the Dominican Republic, I was exposed to many different
influences. I thrived on young adult novels from Louisa May Alcott. I loved
Enid Blyton and blazed through The Famous Five, The Seven Secrets and The
Malory Towers series. I think I wanted to be a student at Malory Towers as much
as my kids wanted to go to school at Hogwarts!
But,
talk about being a hybrid of many worlds! At the same time I was reading Louisa
May Alcott and Enid Blyton, I was also reading the Latin American classics.
Books such as A Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Aunt Julia and
the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosas, and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende left lasting
impressions. I also tapped into my parents’ wonderful library, enjoying the
Russians (I favored Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy), the French (Victor Hugo), the
Germans (Eric Maria Remarque), the Spanish (Jose Maria Gironella), and the
Americans (Hemingway, always Hemingway).
Later,
when I came to the States, I discovered fantasy and was dazzled by J.R.R.
Tolkien, Stephen Donaldson, Frank Herbert, Robert Jordan, and George R.R.
Martin, way before he became popular, I should add. I also fell in love with
commercial fiction. Diana Gabaldon, Bernard Cornwell and Anne Rice are some of
my all-time favorites.
What's the best part of the writing process for
you? What's the most challenging?
The
best part of the writing process for me is the writing itself. I love working
on a first draft, laying down the ideas, characters and structure of a novel
for the first time, discovering the full story in my mind. There's something
liberating about a blank screen, about the sentences turning into paragraphs
and the paragraphs into chapters. I love the evolution of a story, the
transformation that occurs as the story progresses, the unforeseen twists and turns
that defy the outline and provoke the imagination.The most challenging part of the writing process comes at the end for me, after the manuscript is done. I'm not one for self-promotion and yet the current publishing environment requires a great deal of it. I love talking to readers about writing and books, getting to know them, listening to their ideas and reactions to the stories and reading and writing in general. But tooting my own horn? It doesn't come naturally to me.
If you were to mentor new writers, what would
you tell them about the writing business?
I
enjoy mentoring new writers. I always tell them to educate themselves in the
totality of the process upfront. It saves time if you have the basics covered,
if the writer is proficient in grammar, punctuation, formatting and so forth.
It also helps enormously if the writer has a good idea of how the industry
works and how the market for her genre behaves.
I
would also tell a new writer to submit their work to the highest possible
standards of critical review prior to shopping for publishers. There's a lot of
stuff clogging the pipeline and a polished, edited manuscript can make all the
difference in the world. Editors, critique groups, other writers and beta
readers who know the genre can be invaluable to the new writer.
Above
all, I would tell the new writer to write, to complete the manuscript from
beginning to end, to edit it, to trudge through the entire creative process and
learn from it. Your first manuscript may never see the light of day. Maybe your
second and third won't either, but no one can take away the treasure trove of
learning that you gain each time you complete the creative process from
beginning to end and the joy that comes from writing.Thank you Eleanor for inviting me to participate in the Sisters in Crime blog hop. Hop on to the next blog and meet Barb Caffrey, the talented author of the comic, YA urban fantasy, Elfie on the Loose.
Links:
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I love reading about other authors. This was great! @v@
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your Sisters in Crime blog hop post, Dora. (Say that three times fast. :-)) Thanks for letting me know about it, so I could get in on the fun, too...
ReplyDeleteAnd it definitely is fun to get to know a little bit more about my favorite authors. (You're in that category.)